#chAI: A community to promote AI in India led by pi Ventures

A journalist and writer from hills, Kritika has an inclination towards technology, politics and sports.

A journalist and writer from hills, Kritika has an inclination towards technology, politics and sports. Her interests include trekking, traveling and exploring the world.

The applied artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and IoT- focused early stage venture fund, pi Ventures, has planned to create #chAI (AI over a cup of chai)’ — an Artificial Intelligence (AI) focused Indian community. Chai is a Hindi word for tea.

#chAI will help in building a community having in-depth knowledge of AI and its applications, and hopes to encourage more AI companies in India. International Finance Corporation (IFC), is partnering pi Ventures in the initiative.

According to IFC, its long term investments in developing countries rose to nearly $19 billion, in FY16.

Both the organizations will enable peer to peer learning and organize meetings and discussions for stakeholders.

“#chAI is our effort to build the community around AI startups. Focused sessions around a topic get entrepreneurs to collaborate on technology. Support and encouragement from IFC has been the icing on the cake for #chAI. It is helping the initiative by drawing more participants across India and globally,” said Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures.

A research by Marketsandmarkets shows that AI market is expected to be worth $16.06 billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 62.9% from 2016 to 2022 with 2015 as a base year.

“IFC is keen to drive capacity building in technology innovation by supporting an active dialogue amongst industry participants in artificial intelligence, a space that could dramatically transform a wide range of sectors over the next few decades. A rich exchange of ideas and learnings, and a closely connected supportive ecosystem that encourages experimentation is critical to spurring globally relevant innovation out of India,” said Ruchira Shukla, South Asia’s regional lead for Venture Capital, IFC.